The purpose of this article is to examine and criticize the central theory of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, coined by him as “the idea of Iranshahri.” According to him, the “refusal of thought and modernity” and the “decline of Iranian civilization” were all due to abandonment of the “idea of Iranshahri” or “Iranshahri thought.”
His self-constructed concept of “Iranshahri thought ” is inferential and derived from unsubstantiated assumptions. Tabatabai argues that Iran can achieve its own modernity only through the removal of the aforementioned obstacles, and the revival of “the idea of Iranshahri”. He says, “the future of Iran is the past of the West.”
One would ask what is supposed to be achieved by going back to the so-called “Iranshahri ida”, and Iran’s own modernity? Development and progress like the West? If so, did not many non-western societies in Asia, Arab countries in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere reach development and progress through modernization without experiencing “the past of the West”?
Did not some of them move up and progress quickly in parallel with the West? Why should Iran wait ” for the revival of an obscure and racialized idea of the so-called “Iranshahri thought.
